The map wasn't in a file.
It was in a man's mind — a subcontractor from Meerut who delivered steel sheets to printing presses across Delhi. Vikram bumped into him outside the Chandni Chowk post office. Dropped a bundle of papers. Apologized. Their hands touched.
Three seconds.
The connection snapped in like a hook.
The man's name was Harbans. Simple, quiet, honest — but unknowingly useful.
In his memory, Vikram saw roads not on British maps. Dirt paths behind temples. Old grain godowns converted to warehouse use. Places where shipments arrived in the dark and left with no stamp.
But one location stood out.
A dried-out tannery, three miles beyond the city wall, half-burnt in a fire during the plague years. The British had declared it unsafe. Harbans had once helped offload a crate of glass there for an arms dealer, but remembered little beyond the smell.
That's where Vikram went.
The structure still stood.
Walls blackened, but strong. Foundation stone thick. Open ground nearby. A single well. Most important — no patrols, no ownership, no paperwork.
Vikram spent the first day walking the perimeter. The second, touching the stone, memorizing its layout. The third, sketching a plan.
On the fourth, he moved.
He brought no workers.
Only boys.
The same street runners. The same silent carriers. All now connected through Magicnet. And one — Sattu — who now carried Intermediate Structural Repairs, fused from three laborers' minds.
They worked at night.
No hammers. No carts. Just slow restoration. Quiet brick stacking. Broken tools reshaped. No one in the city noticed the lights — because there were none.
Just silence. And shadows.
The space grew.
Walls repaired. Beams restored. An old underground water trench converted into a cooling channel. Within three weeks, it looked like an abandoned godown again — from the outside.
But inside?
A press machine arrived. Smuggled parts. Ink vats. A modified binding unit. Nothing large. Nothing that would echo.
The real asset wasn't the machines.
It was who operated them.
Three boys. Each injected with:
Intermediate Press Operations
Beginner Mechanical Maintenance
Intermediate Discipline
Vikram didn't need numbers. He needed invisible efficiency.
When the first full run of pamphlets rolled off the line — black ink, crisp type, silent message — Vikram held the first copy under the moonlight.
The press in Chandni Chowk served as the face.
This was the engine.
No taxes. No permits. No names.
Just steel, paper, and silence.
A factory that did not exist — except to those whose minds he now walked through.
And in time, this press wouldn't print slogans.
It would print orders.